Happy (Belated) Birthday To Me

I've decided to start chronicling the updates I'm doing in my home as a virtual scrapbook of sorts.  I also have the fantasy that years from now my kids will be excited to look back and fondly recall the transformation of our house through their childhood.

For years I've wanted to change the layout of my first floor bathroom so the toilet wasn't visible from the kitchen prep area.  I've thought about taking the shower out and moving the door so the entrance was further down the hall (this idea was squashed when our master bath pipes burst and I saw the utility of an extra shower), I considered swapping the toilet for the sink so at least the sink is what you saw when you looked in, I thought hard about teaching my sons to close the door when the used the bathroom (clearly and exercise in futility) and then finally, the idea hit me...I needed a "barn door" on a red track that I could open and close as needed.

After a multi-day search on Craigslist for the perfect door, I stumbled across this beauty:

It is an 1869 locally-created, metal-wrapped wood fire door out of a local factory in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.

It even had a metal track already attached.  I knew I had to have this so I called up my husband and asked if he wanted to get it for me for my birthday and luckily, he was more than happy to do so.

My sister-in-law and I took the exciting trek to and fro Philly to retrieve it. Our adventure included driving on the sidewalk, pulling random strangers off the street to help load it and then recruiting local pool guys in my neighborhood to unload it...this door is HEAVY!

This door lived in my garage for a few months until I decided who was going to hang it and how I was going to paint it.  I knew I wanted to paint it white to match the décor of my house but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about the hardware.  After much trial and error, my eye was most attracted to the door being painted a stark white.  I knew I wanted a red track to mimic the red curtain rod in the adjacent room

I used my favorite red spray paint, Rustoleum "Sunrise Red" which to me, it the closest match to the red already inside my house.

Finally, on July 4th, my door was hung.  Here is the photo my contractor send me before he left:

 

 

He added some silver washers that needed to be painted and also suggested that I remove the paint from the brass plaque and use it as a focal piece which he couldn't have been "right-on" about.  Here is a picture of "The Door" in its final incarnation:

 

 

 

Here is some cuteness to end the post with: